Illiterate Tycoon
Kevin Linfoot is an extremely successful man. He is only 48 years old but has built up, from scratch, a property empire worth millions of pounds. He has a partner and a son. He lives in a beautiful house. It would seem that he has a very bright mind and has made the most of what life has offered him. But Kevin is completely and utterly illiterate.
I am dyslex and I am in my first year of uni at the age of 57 and i do all my work by talking to my computer also I have soft where which which will read books to me
Complain about this postI have had a very good and varried life
You should tell this gentleman that whatever happened to him in school he should find a retired teacher like myself who have years of experience in teaching reading to tutor him on a regular basis and teach him to read, He also needs to see an optician who specialises in coloured and other lenses which can help. Never give up. When reading stories to his baby tell him to get his wife to put them on to tapes so that he can learn the stories. Children love repetition Good luck
Complain about this posti dont listen to radio ...
Complain about this postbut after lemn i also listened to kevin linfoot
always i seems to hear surprise in voices when dyslexics can do anything let alone be successful
dyslexic doesnt mean daft ~ it means different
perhaps i hear surprise because im dyslexic
I went to uni at 48 ~ there were three dyslexics in my year ~ we all got our degrees and ~ surprise ~ we went into education to help others like ourselves
I switched the radio on toward the end of your programme to hear Kevin Linfoot whose condition does not allow him to read books to his 18-month-old child. I cannot imagine what it would be like not being able to read to ones children. I spent hours reading to mine and even through it was more than twenty years ago I remember my daughter and I screaming out that ‘Mr Magnolia has only one boot!’
I have a solution to suggest to him that he might like to consider and would require having access to a sound recorder and a computer; indeed, the computer could be the sound recorder.
Kevin Linfoot said that he had a good memory, so:
· Ask a friend or family member to go through the book, reading it to him once or twice so that he gets a feeling for the story and the kind of voice and inflection he wants to use.
· Sit down with the sound recorder and ‘the friend reads a sentence’ followed by Kevin Linfoot ‘repeating the sentence’ in the using the voice and inflection he wants.
· Do this for the whole book.
· Copy the recording to the PC and ‘edit out the friend.’ (There would be no need to buy expensive sound recording software – the free program ‘Audacity’ would do the job perfectly.)
· Write the recording back to cassette tape, or CD. In the case of the CD create one page a track arranging track numbers be to be the same as the page numbers (so that a quick check with the player would give the correct page number to turn to).
· Then, he can sit with his child and ‘read’ the story by playing the tape or the CD, hitting ‘pause’ whenever he wants so they can talk about the story or they pictures on the page, etc.
A similar scheme to this, but clearly for a different purpose, has been used with long-term prisoners so that their children can have stories read to them.
I hope that this helps.
Complain about this postI'd just like to say thank you to Kevin Linfoot for coming onto the radio to share his life with us. What a challenge he has and is facing and how magnificently he has and is overcoming it. He deserves his success and I'm sure that if there is a solution out there to his dyslexia then he will find it.
Good Luck
Complain about this postI am a family therapist working in South Leeds. I am currently working with an 11 year old boy who is illiterate. He is heavily into crime and drugs and I am desperately trying to find ways to help him think about his life and where he is heading. Meeting or talking to Kevin I'm sure would inspire him. Any chance of this happening? Val Jackson
Complain about this postBy chance I was listening to the programme on Saturday when I heard the interview with Kevin Linfoot.
As the Administrator of a specialist private Consutlancy for Dyslexia, Vision and Learning since 1988 I have talked to many such cases as men in their forties. I am well aware that the latest research work on the subject of Learning includes the Vision system that we all use for reading, writing, and close work such as computers.
But few people know that the ordinary eye test as carried out at local Opticians does NOT test the eyes in the mode in which we use them for learning. This is very important as we now knoiw that many of the so called Dyslexia symptoms found with a Dyslexia assessment are in fact Binocular Vision symptoms and NOT dyslexia ones.
Binocular Vision requires a Behavioural Optometrist to deal with it, not an ordinary Optician.
I have juist had a case of a 46 year old man who has had three dysklexia assessments during his life time and still could not read properly. After my use of an internet assessment and a visitor to the right professional he can now read and do close work for the first time in his life. He is also highly intelligent and verbally bright. I did all that work by using the internet where all the professional information is available.
Although I can be cintacted by e mail I think that the best thing is for me to send all the relevant information to the Saturday Live show at the ´óÏó´«Ã½ and possibly get a programme to deal with the subject so that everrybody can get the up-to-date information.
Other than that I am quite happy to have contacts via an e mail at henry@edadvisory.fsbusiness.co.uk. Anything from the internet is of couse free.
Henry Crowther
Complain about this postI have not been able to stop thinking about the wonderful Paul on the radio yesterday morning. Fi Glover was very sensitive in asking him to tell his tragic story. He is a giant in my eyes and I wish him the best for the future.
Complain about this postI agree with Nick who says we're not daft, just different. As Kevin has proved, it is not the "disability" that is the problem but the determination to achieve in whatever field. If you really want to do something, you will find a way of overcoming the problems which actually can give you greater skills. Kevin, as for reading stories to your son - you can always make them up, as you obviously have a good, inventive mind. But the most important thing is just being with your son and loving him - which you obviously do. (By the way, as a border line dyslexic - my problem being numbers and word / letter order rather than not being able to read at all - I have to say it worries me that the most badly written comments on this blog are the ones written by the person offering advice!)
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